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7 comments on The Bullroarer - Tuesday 12th February 2008
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We need to maintain a sceptical approach to the term 'baseload' power. The importance of 'baseload' is being somewhat over played.
We have arbitrarily shifted a lot of power use to night-time because we have created this baseload supply. Large solar generating capacity would mean that all those home hot water heating systems could be turned on during the day instead. The same goes for a lot of industrial uses which have been shifted to night production because of the cheap electricity. If we didn't have this 'baseload' generation, the economics wouldn't drive as much energy use at night.
cheers
Phil.
I heard today that electrolytic zinc and aluminium smelters pay about 3c per kwh 24/7. For obscure reasons this is supposed to help everybody. In the old days of sailing ships the sailors would remain wenching at the local tavern until the wind sprung up. Maybe the smelters could hoist the jolly roger or similar when cheap power is up and the workers could call in to do a bit of smelting. Alternatively electricity pricing should be reviewed for round-the-clock users.
I usually refer people to Mark Deissendorf's "Baseload fallacy" document too :
http://www.cana.net.au/documents/Diesendorf_TheBaseLoadFallacy_FS16.pdf